The recovery and reuse of disused railway heritage is a mostly recent topic, which arose in response to the substantial decommissioning of railway lines from the first half of the 20th century onwards. It was during this period that the first greeways were born in America, evidence of a new way of considering and interpreting former railway infrastructures, to be reconverted and returned to society with diversified functions and roles. The advantages in recovering this vast heritage – including not only the railway tracks, but also the architectural artefacts (stations, toll booths, roadman’s houses, warehouses, etc.) that insist on them – are many. First of all, there is the decrease in land consumption, by locating new functions in disused structures, as well as the creation of alternative infrastructure systems, based on sustainability and low environmental impact. In addition, the conscious recovery and reuse of railway buildings allows the preservation of local memories and histories, together with typological, constructive and formal characteristics typical of this building class. However, refunctionalising these places often appears difficult, requiring multiple competences that not only include architectural and environmental issues, but also social and economic ones. In the light of these considerations, the paper investigates the topic of the recovery and reuse of disused railway heritage by proposing a multicriteria analysis tool that takes into account these different and multiple fields. The tool, specially designed for evaluating interventions on these particular architectural artefacts, will be applied to a case study: the former railway toll booth in via Lungomare Guglielmo Marconi, located in Salerno (SA). The application, which involved experts in various fields, will highlight, as an effective solution, just one of the projects initially proposed for the reuse of the disused railway toll booth.
The reuse of disused buildings. The case study of railway toll booths: analysis and methodological proposals
Pierfrancesco Fiore
;Emanuela D'Andria
2023-01-01
Abstract
The recovery and reuse of disused railway heritage is a mostly recent topic, which arose in response to the substantial decommissioning of railway lines from the first half of the 20th century onwards. It was during this period that the first greeways were born in America, evidence of a new way of considering and interpreting former railway infrastructures, to be reconverted and returned to society with diversified functions and roles. The advantages in recovering this vast heritage – including not only the railway tracks, but also the architectural artefacts (stations, toll booths, roadman’s houses, warehouses, etc.) that insist on them – are many. First of all, there is the decrease in land consumption, by locating new functions in disused structures, as well as the creation of alternative infrastructure systems, based on sustainability and low environmental impact. In addition, the conscious recovery and reuse of railway buildings allows the preservation of local memories and histories, together with typological, constructive and formal characteristics typical of this building class. However, refunctionalising these places often appears difficult, requiring multiple competences that not only include architectural and environmental issues, but also social and economic ones. In the light of these considerations, the paper investigates the topic of the recovery and reuse of disused railway heritage by proposing a multicriteria analysis tool that takes into account these different and multiple fields. The tool, specially designed for evaluating interventions on these particular architectural artefacts, will be applied to a case study: the former railway toll booth in via Lungomare Guglielmo Marconi, located in Salerno (SA). The application, which involved experts in various fields, will highlight, as an effective solution, just one of the projects initially proposed for the reuse of the disused railway toll booth.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
